18. Like the 1st and 2d Armored Divisions, the 3d was activated before adoption of the organization of three combat commands. Instead of three separate tank and armored infantry battalions, these divisions had two tank regiments and an armored infantry regiment. Though usually holding out a portion of the three regiments as a reserve, the divisions had no "CCR" per se. The table of organization strength called for 3,822 more men than the later armored divisions. Nicknamed Spearhead, the 3d Armored entered combat with the XIX Corps in Normandy. The division joined the VII Corps for the breakout of the hedgerows, the Falaise gap operation, and the pursuit. At the instigation of General Rose, the division commander, combat commands in the 3d Armored Division were known by the names of their commanders. CCA, for example, was Combat Command Hickey. To avoid complications, the conventional CCA and CCB are used in this volume.

19. The exploits of the Big Red One, the 1st Division, had become as renowned by this time as any in the American Army. The division's first combat in World War II was in the invasion of North Africa, followed by the invasion of Sicily and D Day at OMAHA Beach.

20. The 3d Armored Division story is from official records, plus an authoritative unit history, Spearhead in the West (Frankfurt-am-Main: Franz Joseph Heurich, 1945).

34. "Combat strength" is a translation of Kampfstaerke, which includes men actually engaged in the fighting or in immediate support forward of a battalion command post. See Gen Order Nr. 1/2000/44 g., 25 Apr 44, OKH/Gen. St.d.H. Org Abt.

35. These strengths are as of 16 September 1944. For a detailed breakdown from contemporary sources, see Heichler, Germans Opposite VII Corps, pp. 41-42.

38. Veteran of the invasions of North Africa and Sicily, the 9th Division had entered combat in Normandy on 14 June 1944. Its octofoil shoulder patch came out of the fifteenth century, a heraldic symbol denoting the ninth son. Official records of the division are supplemented by extensive combat interviews at battalion level.

39. Special units comprised of men with similar physical disabilities were not uncommon along the Western Front during the fall of 1944. All troops of the so-called Stomach Battalions had ailments of the digestive tract.

44. IX FC and IX TAC, Unit History, Sep 44, and FUSA and IX TAC Daily Summaries, Sep 44. A compendious account of tactical air operations during the fall of 1944 may be found in Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II: Vol. III, Europe: ARGUMENT to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 600 and 614, (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate, eds., Europe: ARGUMENT to V-E Day).

45. The 3d Armored Division on 18 September had 153 medium tanks, of which only 70 to 75 were actually available for use. See 3d Armd Div AAR, Sep 44, and Combat Interv with 3d Armd Div G-4.

67. During this period a squad leader in the 18th Infantry, S. Sgt. JoSeph E. Schaefer, earned the Medal of Honor. After helping thwart a local counterattack, Sergeant Schaefer went beyond his lines to overtake a group of withdrawing Germans and liberate an American squad captured earlier in the fighting. The sergeant personally killed between 15 to 20 Germans, wounded as many more, and took 10 prisoners.